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"Are you junior officers getting your liquor supplies?" What the hell had he meant by that? On an impulse Hearn opened the General's liquor closet, and examined the opened bottlesAlmost every night Cummings could be counted on to drink an inch or two of Scotch, and with a curious niggardliness he would mark the level of the bottle with a pencil before he put it awayHearn had noticed this with amusement, found it an interesting little quirk in all the contradictions of the General
But today the liquor level on his bottle of Scotch was at least two and a half inches below the last pencil markCummings had seen that this morning, had rebuked him for drinking it"Are you junior officers getting your liquor supplies?" Only, that was absurdCummings would know better than that
It could have been ClellanBut it was unlikely Clellan would jeopardize a sinecure like general's orderly merely for a drinkAnd besides, Clellan was shrewd enough to mark the liquor louis vuitton monogram canvas galliera pm level himself if he wanted to take a nip
Suddenly, Hearn had an image of Cummings sitting in his tent the night before, about to go to bed, examining thoughtfully the label of his whisky bottleHe might even pick up his pencil, deliberate a moment or two, and then he would leave the bottle unmarked, return it to the closetWhat had his face looked like at that moment?
This, now, was not funnyNot after the recreation tent and the flowers and KerriganUntil this little episode, he could consider the General's antics as pranks that spewed out of twisted and intense hungersIt had been in a way like the probing banter between friendsAnd frightening, a littleWith all his concerns, with all the pressures upon him, Cummings had had time to concoct these schemes, release a little of the greater frustration he was feeling
And that basically was what their relationship had always been, Hearn understood at this momentHe had been the pet, the dog, to the master, omega replica watches coddled and curried, thrown sweetmeats until he had had the presumption to bite the master onceAnd since then he had been tormented with the particular absorbed sadism that most men could generate only toward an animalHe was a diversion for the General, and he resented it deeply with a cold speechless anger that came to some extent from the knowledge that he had acquiesced in the dog-role, had even had the dog's dreams, carefully submerged, of someday equaling the masterAnd Cummings had probably understood even that, had been amused
He remembered a story Cummings had told him about an employee in the War Department who had been discharged after some Communist documents had been planted in his desk
"I'm surprised it worked," Hearn had said"You say everybody knew the man was harmless
"Those things always work, RobertYou can't begin to imagine how effective the Big Lie isYour average man never dares suspect that the men in power have all the nasty impulses miu miu bags in white he has, except they're more effective about carrying them outBesides, there's never a man who can swear to his own innocenceWe're all guilty, that's the truthThis particular fellow began to wonder if perhaps he had belonged to the partyWhy do you think Hitler was able to stay unmolested so long? The diplomat mentality at its poorest just couldn't believe that he wasn't playing the old game with some new wrinklesIt took an outside observer like you or me to see that he was the interpreter of twentieth-century man
Certainly Cummings would have been perfectly capable of planting those documents if he had thought it necessaryJust as he had finagled the whisky labelAnd he was not going to become a chess piece for the General to directNo doubt Cummings saw him now as a diversion
Hearn stared around the tentIt would be a pleasure to wait for the General and tell him that he had brought back the supplies successfully, but it was a tainted pleasure and handbag chanel Cummings would be quite aware of it"Had to extend yourself a bit, didn't you, Robert?" he might sayHearn lit a cigarette, and walked over to the wastebasket to drop the match
There it was, that instinctive reaction, don't drop a match on the General's floorThere was a limit to how far he could let the General prod himIf you looked at it clearly without the aura of military mumbo-jumbo, it became absurd, perverted, a revolting idea
He dropped the match near the General's foot locker, and then with his heart beating stupidly, he threw his cigarette carefully onto the middle of the General's spotless floor, ground his heel down brutally upon it, and stood looking at it with amazement and a troubled pride
Let Cummings see that
In the G-1 tent the air had become stifling by middayMajor Binner wiped his steel-rimmed glasses, coughed dolefully, and removed a trickle of sweat from the corner of his neat temple"This is a serious thing, Sergeant," he said omega automatic watches quietly |
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